Recycled Bullsh-IT

Are you looking to recruit someone but are struggling to find the right person to fill a key vacancy in your organisation?  Obviously you want the best but have you spent months fruitlessly searching?  To paraphrase Bonnie Tyler in these more gender neutral days, “Where have all the good people/individuals/resources gone?”  Holding out for a Hero is still the typical ‘hope over experience’ approach we are taking to finding the Special One that we desperately need.  Is the market genuinely bereft of the talent we crave?  Is there a skill shortage? In short, yes, but we are asking the wrong question.

Excruciating Recruitment

Most vacancies come about either from someone leaving, voluntarily or otherwise, or from the creation of a new role through change, growth, poor planning, inept management or just empire building.  For some reason, the last three never seem to make it onto the HR form submitted.  If your organisation is bigger (although not necessarily more effective) than a market stall, an HR person or process will spring up to guide you through the waking nightmare of recruitment.

To start with, you need to come up with a compelling argument as to why you need anyone else.  To you it may seem common sense that if you lose someone or are asked to do something more or different, you could do with another bod.  Typically, your senior management and their HR whipping-bods will question your competence, capability, and shoe size for foolishly requesting more in an attempt to show they have control over you, and are tight on cost management.  Except for their own packages, naturally.

Next is the job description or role profile.  You may think that if you want a Java Programmer, your job ad just reads “Java Programmer”.  No chance.  Get ready to work out and explicitly document their Work Dimensions, Relationships, Responsibilities, Skills/Knowledge/Experience, Personal Attributes(!), Qualifications, Capabilities, Strengths, Behaviours and Competencies.  And although writing Java Programmer against all of these is mildly satisfying, it won’t see the light of day unless you state they need to be at Customer Focus: Level 2, Hipster Beard: Level 4, etc.  Also, have fun describing your company’s culture without being fired or sued under the Trade Descriptions Act.

Given IT is a specialised area, you might think about calling your local recruitment agent, who knows your company, the market, and every techie in the region, so he can send through some CVs of relevant candidates, whose CVs consist of an animated gif of “I ❤ Java”.  However, you are probably also experiencing another current fad of getting HR to recruit directly and avoid the agents altogether.  So expect a three month delay, as their direct ads and LinkedIn hassling fails to uncover anyone of interest, leading you to call the agent again.  If you’re lucky there will be at least one candidate who passes the CV ‘sniff test’, and will hopefully do the same in person, although you don’t want to be branded smellist.

This should now be the easy part.  Get someone in to meet, have a chat, see if they can string two bytes or a word together, decide whether you like them or not, then offer them a job. Or not.  But now your HR minder will have put the victim candidate through a psychometric test, and insist on a competency-based set of questions and/or a role play scenario.  Most of my techies would get excited about role play until they find out that for the interview it will be about interacting with their colleagues and contain very few weapons, orcs or health potions.  Also, most of the online psychometric tests state you can’t fail: If you come across as a psycho, welcome to senior management or sales.  Metric means you’ll make an excellent wage slave. 

If they get through all that and you are ready to offer them the job, don’t expect to get them to sign for the salary you have offered, based on a ‘market-tested’ package forced on you by HR.  Even the most innocuous candidate will almost certainly know what the real going rate is, but also see this as probably their only opportunity to get a decent wage, as they know they’ll be on below inflation annual pay rises from now on. Complaining they are asking for more than you are on, only highlights: 1) Your company are tightwads, and 2) You obviously haven’t got the smarts to leverage up your own salary, so would make a poor manager for them.  If you are lucky and/or desperate enough you may get to a compromise that just blows your budget, and gets you a bollocking from the beancounters.

This process will have taken about three months (if you’re lucky), but feel like six.  Given the average stay in a company is about two years, if you have more than eight people in the department this will become a never-ending waking nightmare.  All these competencies, psycho tests and role plays have made no difference to how long people stay, and have significantly increased the effort required to recruit. 

The Greater Good

So what is the right question?

Try “How do I build and motivate a team that people want to work for and which can evolve and improve over time through the collective skills and will of the individuals?”

At the risk of exciting my Trekkie colleagues, this is not a Borg-like assimilation where everyone obeys their Queen unthinkingly.  It is more the Total Football approach, exemplified by the Dutch and Brazilian teams in the 70s, where any player can take over from any other player in a fluid system allowing momentum to be maintained in different situations and opportunities.  In business many jobs have become highly specialised (or ossified depending on your outlook), with people unwilling to embrace a wider role in their organisation.  Although the roles in processes need to be well defined and carried out properly, a balanced team will be able to cover tasks and responsibilities outside their job title because: a) they can through having a wide appreciation of what the whole team does, and b) they will instinctively cover for each other as they believe in the purpose and goals of their team.

This belief drives collaborative behaviour which ensures that the success of the team is paramount, in which everyone takes pride.  Obviously, this works best if everyone in the team feels the same way.  Any good manager or leader will instinctively build the team spirit by reinforcing the common values and the outcomes required.  In these teams not only is turnover lower, but accommodating change is easier as the shared ownership provides greater continuity and allows newcomers to slot in easily.  In this situation, recruitment becomes a lot more pleasurable and a lot less onerous, as it will be clear what ‘competencies’ you are looking for – attitude, commitment, positive energy – which funnily enough were not on the list HR thrust upon you.

Unlike my view of agile, you don’t need supermen for this to work.  With a ‘can do’ attitude and willingness to support their colleagues, anyone can succeed as part of this team.  And the good people toiling away in their silos will look enviously upon you and will be keen to take part.  You no longer have a skill shortage, but a waiting list of keen applicants.

John ‘Resistance is Futile’ Moe